A SURVEY OF SMART ELECTRICAL BOARDS IN UBIQUITOUS …

A SURVEY OF SMART ELECTRICAL BOARDS IN UBIQUITOUS SENSOR

NETWORKS FOR GEOMATICS APPLICATIONS

S.M.R. Moosavi a, *, A. Sadeghi-Niaraki b

a Dept. of Geomatic Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Larestan, Iran. - [email protected]

b GIS Dept., Geoinformation Technology Center of Excellence, Faculty of Geodesy&Geomatics Eng, K.N.Toosi Univ. of Tech.,

Tehran, Iran. - [email protected]

KEY WORDS: Smart boards, ubiquitous sensor networks, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, physical computing, ubiquitous GIS

ABSTRACT:

Nowadays more advanced sensor networks in various fields are developed. There are lots of online sensors spreading around the

world. Sensor networks have been used in Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) since sensor networks have expanded. Health

monitoring, environmental monitoring, traffic monitoring, etc, are the examples of its applications in Geomatics. Sensor network is

an infrastructure comprised of sensing (measuring), computing, and communication elements that gives an administrator the ability

to instrument, observe, and react to events and phenomena in a specified environment. This paper describes about development

boards which can be used in sensor networks and their applications in Geomatics and their role in wireless sensor networks and also

a comparison between various types of boards. Boards that are discussed in this paper are Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagle board,

Cubieboard. The Boards because of their great potential are also known as single board computers. This paper is organized in four

phases: First, Reviewing on ubiquitous computing and sensor networks. Second, introducing of some electrical boards. Then,

defining some criterions for comparison. Finally, comparing the Ubiquitous boards.

* Corresponding author

1. INTRODUCTION

Nowadays more advanced sensor networks in various fields are

developed. There are lots of online sensors spreading around

the world. Sensor networks have been used in Geospatial

Information Systems (GIS) since sensor networks have

expanded. Health monitoring (Kemis et al., 2012),

environmental monitoring (Son et al., 2006) (Choi et al., 2015),

traffic monitoring (Costanzo, 2013), etc, are the examples of its

applications in Geomatics. A sensor is a device that receives a

stimulus and responds with an electrical signal (Fraden, 2010).

Sensor is a transducer which purpose is to sense some

characteristics of its environs. It receives signal or energy from

physical environment to make it readable and provide

corresponding output information. The readable output of

electrical sensors is the variation of output voltage which it has

converted to an understandable data to human. Sensors are

connected to the Internet or an internal network. They send their

location and the recorded or online environmental data. Sensor

can be controlled remotely and human interaction with the

physical environment can be provided. Sensors’ Applications

include manufacturing and machinery, airplanes and aerospace,

cars, medicine and robotics.it is also included in our day-to-day

life.

2. UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING

The phrase “Ubiquitous Computing” has invented by Mark

Weiser around 1988, during his tenure as Chief Technologist of

the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Weiser wrote

some of the earliest papers both alone and with PARC Director

and Chief Scientist John Seely Brown on the subject, largely

defining it and sketching out its major concerns (Weiser, 1996).

Ubiquitous computing, or ubicomp, is the term given to the

third era of modern computing. The first era was defined by the

mainframe computer. Second, is the era of the PC, a personal

computer used by one person and dedicated to them. The third

era, ubiquitous computing, representative of present time, is

characterized by explosion of small networked portable

computer products in the form of smart phones, PDAs, and

embedded computers built into many of the devices, Figure 1

(Krumm, 2010). Ubiquitous computing is the method of

enhancing computer used by making many computers available

throughout the physical environment, but making them

effectively invisible to the user. One of the positive effects from

ubiquitous computing is people who do not have skills use the

computer and people with the physical lack (the defect) could

continue to use the computer for all the needs. Ubiquitous

technology means the ability to access to any services and

gathering information in any location such as country, city,

workplace and even home, any time, by anyone, by any device

and in any network (LAN, Wireless etc.). In ubiquitous

perspective every element of real world can communicate

together.

Figure 1. Graph conceptually portraying three eras of modern

computing.

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XL-1/W5, 2015 International Conference on Sensors & Models in Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry, 23–25 Nov 2015, Kish Island, Iran

This contribution has been peer-reviewed. doi:10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-1-W5-503-2015

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3. SENSOR NETWORK

Sensor network is an infrastructure comprised of sensing

(measuring), computing, and communication elements that

gives an administrator the ability to instrument, observe, and

react to events and phenomena in a specified environment. The

administrator typically is a civil, governmental, commercial, or

industrial entity. The environment can be the physical world, a

biological system, or an information technology (IT) framework

(Sohraby et al., 2007). The technology for sensing and control

includes electric and magnetic field sensors; radio-wave

frequency sensors; optical-, electro-optic, and infrared sensors;

radars; lasers; location/navigation sensors; seismic and pressure

wave sensors; environmental parameter sensors (e.g., wind,

humidity, heat). Today’s sensors can be described as ‘‘smart’’

inexpensive devices equipped with multiple on-board sensing

elements; they are low-cost, low-power untethered

multifunctional nodes that are logically homed to a central sink

node.

4. USN, U-GIS

In order to have Ubiquitous GIS (UBGIS), an integration of

Ubiquitous computing and traditional GIS is necessary. By

using UBGIS, any user or any system through any

communication device can access to geographic information

and applications at any time and any place. The dynamic

context of the user is playing the major role of UBGI. For

achieving the dynamic context in UBGIS, ubiquitous computing

concepts should employ Ubiquitous Sensor Networks (USNs)

to collect any data on any environmental parameter. Dynamic

context is defined as dynamic location and the identity of any

object, people and parameter in environment. Ubiquitous sensor

networks (USN) consist multiple nodes, each node can

independently communicate with a server or using wireless

technology that connects nodes together and they all connect to

a server through a router node. In addition of sensor, there are

hardwares such as electronic board, network modules in order

to process data and communicate to the server. Electronic

boards have the task of pre-processing of the sensor’s output.

By developing them, they will have the ability to connect to a

network. Boards with the programming ability can analyse the

sensor’s output and affects its surroundings by controlling

lights, motors, and other actuators. Actuators are things like

lights and LEDs, speakers, motors, and displays.

5. PHYSICAL COMPUTING

Physical computing is interactive physical systems which can

sense and respond to the analog world. It’s a creative

framework for understanding human beings' relationship to the

digital world, Figure 2. Interaction is “A cyclic process in which

two actors alternately listen, think, and speak” (Crawford,

2003). “Interactive” is a fuzzy term, and often misused for all

kinds of purposes and most physical computing projects can be

broken down into these same three stages: listening, thinking,

and speaking—or, in computer terms: input, processing, and

output (O’Sullican and Igoe, 2004).

PROCESSINGOUTPUTS INPUTS

SYSTEM

ENVIRONMENT

Figure 2. Physical Computing

6. ELECTRONIC BOARDS

For pre-processing sensors’ output and communication with the

server or a router node, an electronic circuit is necessary. In the

past for any type of sensor and application, a circuit should be

designed. But by recent development in electronic boards, a lot

of boards have seen that can connect to variety of sensors and

other equipment such as wireless connectivity modules or GSM

modules. These boards have called “Single Board

Microcontroller”. Single board microcontroller is a

microcontroller that built onto the single printed circuit. This

board contain all necessary element to do a task such as:

microprocessor, RAM, I/O circuits, etc. The intention is that the

board is immediately useful to an application developer,

without spending much time and effort in developing the

controller hardware. Some of single board microcontrollers

because of their great potential, computing and connectivity

options also known as single board computers. There are types

of boards some of them kind of open source computing

hardwares that follow the open community to let the users to re-

design and develop them. This paper discuss about some boards

such as: Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagle board and Cubieboard.

6.1 Arduino

Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and

control more of the physical world than the desktop computer.

It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a

simple microcontroller board, and a development environment

for writing software for the board. The project is based on a

family of microcontroller board designs manufactured primarily

by SmartProjects in Italy and also have cloned by several other

vendors. An Arduino board consists an 8, 16bit or 32bit Atmel

AVR microcontroller with other components to facilitate the

incorporation with other circuits. One of the advantages of

Arduino is its standard connectors that let user to connect board

to variety of modules known as shields. The communication of

some shields with Arduino board can be done by directly over

various pins, there are also some shield that individually are

addressable via serial bus. So many shields can be used in

parallel. Early Arduino boards used to be programmed via

RS232 ports, however current boards can be programmed via

USB and also some unofficial models programmed over a

Bluetooth connection. The Arduino board is where the code has

written and executed. The board can only control and respond

to electricity, so specific components are attached to it to enable

it to interact with the real world. These components can be

sensors, which convert some aspect of the physical world to

electricity so that the board can sense it, or actuators, which get

electricity from the board and convert it into something that

changes the world. Examples of sensors include switches,

accelerometers, and ultrasound distance sensors. Arduino board

is real-time which means no operating system installed on them,

this capability is useful for fast responses (Margolis, 2012).



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Figure 3. Arduino Uno

Figure 4. Arduino Gemma (wearable)

6.2 Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized computer (Single-Board

Computer) created by the non-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation

in the UK. It all started when a chap named Eben Upton (now

an employee at Broadcom) got together with his colleagues at

the University of Cambridge's computer laboratory, to discuss

how they could bring back the kind of simple programming and

experimentation that was widespread among kids in the 1980s

on home computers such as the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, and

Commodore 64 (Sjogelid, 2013). The Raspberry Pi is built off

the back of the Broadcom BCM2835 and BCM2836 SoCs.

These SoCs are multimedia application processors geared

towards mobile and embedded devices which includes ARM

processor, GPU, 512Mb to 1 GB RAM, and MicroSD socket

for boot media and persistent storage (Dennis, 2013). Operating

systems like Linux and Windows 10 can be installed on

Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi main programming language is

python and also supports: Java, C, C++ and Ruby.

Figure 5. Raspberry Pi A+

Figure 6. Raspberry Pi 2 B

6.3 BeagleBoard

The BeagleBoard is an open-source single-board computer

produced by Texas Instruments in association with some other

companies. The BeagleBoard also designed with open source

software. The board base on ARM architecture and it’s included

GPU to provide 2D and 3D rendering that supports OpenGL.

Some models have both video outs which provided through S-

Video and HDMI connections. A single SD card also included

that supports USB On-The-Go.

Figure 7. BeagleBone Black

6.4 CubieBoard

CubieBoard is a Single-Board-Computer which made in china.

It can run Android 4 ICS, Ubuntu 12.04 desktop, Fedora 19

ARM Remix desktop, Archlinux ARM, a basic Debian server

via the Cubian distribution, or OpenBSD.

Figure 8. CubieBoard 2



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Figure 9. CubieBoard 4 (CC A80)

7. CRITERIONS

To choose an appropriate board some criterions are necessary

such as price, power consumption, expandability and

compatibility, ease of use and development, information

resource availability for beginners. For better understanding of

power consumption related to Table. 1: Voltage is measured in

units of volts (V). With the symbol V, it is the measure of

potential in a circuit. The oft used analogy is water - voltage

then becomes the height from which the water is flowing or

falling. Greater height, more potential energy from the water

flow, similarly greater voltage, more potential energy. Current is

measured in units of amperes (A), usually abbreviated to amps,

and is the rate of flow of electric charge past a point. The

symbol used for current is I. To continue the water analogy,

current might be considered the width/depth of the water flow.

Power is the amount of energy in a system, and is measured in

units of watts (W). With the symbol P, in quantitative terms for

an electrical circuit, it is equal to current × voltage. Hence,

P = I × V. To round out the water analogy, there is a lot more

power in Niagara Falls than the downpipe on the side of a house

(Oxer and Blemings, 2010). Price is an important criterion

because ubiquitous networks are implemented in a large scale.

Another important criterion is power consumption, need to

know the places that sensor should be installed. There is lack of

power in some places, so if power consumption of hardware

were low, the boards can be work by small solar cells which

solar cells charge batteries in day to save energy for board in

night. More power consumption needs bigger solar cells and

bigger solar cells get more expensive. Expandability in

electronic boards means the board has the ability to support

more add-on shields and modules (e.g. GSM shield (Costanzo,

2013), Display controllers, Motor controllers, Wi-Fi module

such as Xbee (Harikrishnan, 2015)) boards can do more tasks

with shields and modules and compatibility with them.

Generally open source boards are easy to use and develop and

in case of open source, the hardware and software can be

modified by project goal.

Table 1. Board Comparison

Brand Model Size (mm) Cost

(US$)

CPU Flash Memory

Operating

Voltage

Power

Consumption Operating System

Core Speed (MHz)

Arduino

Uno 68.6 x 53.4 24.95 1 16 32 KB 5V < 0.5 W -

Pro 52.07x53.3

4 14.95 1 8 16 KB 3.3V < 0.5 W -

Gemma ᴓ 27.98 Dia 9.95 1 8 8 KB 3.3V < 0.5 W -

LilyPad ᴓ 51 Dia 19.95 1 8 16 KB 2.7V < 0.5 W -

Nano 45x18 4.25 1 16 16 KB 5V < 1 W -

Raspberry Pi

Pi 1 A+ 65x56.5 25 1 700 MicroSD 5V 1 W Linux

Pi 1 B+ 86x56 39.95 1 700 MicroSD 5V 3 W Linux

Pi 2 B 86x56 41.95 4 700 MicroSD 5V 4 W Linux/Windows 10

BeagleBoard Beaglebone

Black 86.40x53.3 50 1 1000 4 GB 5V 2.3 W Linux/Android/WinCE

Cubie Board Ver. 2 100x60 70 2 1000 4 GB 5V 10-15 W Linux/Android

CC A80 111x111 135 8 1300 8 GB 5V 10-15 W Linux/Android

8. CONCLUSION

Based on comparison table boards with lowest prices are

Arduino, Arduino boards also use low energy consumption,

when the device energy consumption is low there is room to add

more sensor and add-ons. Also lack of operating system on

Arduino boards is a benefit for real-time computing and

responses. In case of small volume of data that received from

sensors, boards do not need much memory and CPU speed.

BeagleBoard and Cubie boards have great performances but due

to high price and high power consumption are not good choices

for Ubiquitous sensor networks, but can be used as a server.

Raspberry Pi boards because they host an operating system are

good for large computing and data logging and in case of

factory ready Ethernet module, better communication to

network is available. Raspberry Pi also can connect to multiple

Arduino boards (with Wi-Fi or other methods) and receive and

analyse the data. In case of existence of good information

resources, ease of software and hardware development, Arduino

and Raspberry Pi as smart boards are considered as a good

choice to build Ubiquitous sensor networks (Ferdoush and Li,

2014). Most researches in ubiquitous GIS have not been tested

in the real world (especially in Iran), due to the lack of electrical

knowledge of Geomatic students. These boards called DIY (Do-

It-Yourself) boards, the operation is simple and lots of

resources are available.

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Choi, Y., Hong, S., Joe, I., 2015. A Fire Evacuation Guidance

System Based on Ubiquitous Sensor Networks, in:

Advanced Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering.

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Costanzo, A., 2013. An arduino based system provided with

GPS/GPRS shield for real time monitoring of traffic

flows. 2013 7th Int. Conf. Appl. Inf. Commun. Technol.

pp. 1–5.



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Crawford, C., 2003. The Art of Interactive Design, No Starch

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A SURVEY OF SMART ELECTRICAL BOARDS IN UBIQUITOUS …